Tag Archives: himanshu suri

FEATURED
What a Crazy Random Happenstance: Both Ex-Members of Das Racist, and Amanda Palmer, Drop Music Videos in Same Week

I bet you guys called each other up and coordinated it. Don’t lie. I know you did.

Himanshu Suri ’07 (Heems) and Victor Vazquez ’06 (Kool A.D.) were Das Racist, Wesleyan (and critic)’s favorite slack-rap duo. And then suddenly they weren’t. That’s about all the history about those two I’m gonna give you, because let’s be honest, you know all of this. It’s not like we don’t post about them every other day or something.  

So, the two decided back in December to call it quits, go their own ways, and pursue their already-blooming solo careers: Heems making music as Heems, and Kool A.D. as Kool A.D.

And then yesterday, probably maybe definitely unintentionally, each released a new music video. What a crazy random happenstance.  Then again, they’re still friends, so maybe it was coordinated, or a conspiracy, or both. Cabaret-rocker Amanda Palmer ’98 also released a music video about a week ago, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t in on Kool A.D. and Heems’ plan.

Read on about the three, very very different, music videos after the jump.

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FEATURED
New Heems “Soup Boys (Pretty Drones)” [Video]

Heems ’07 just came out with a music video for his politically poignant drone song that is also about picking up hot girls. Spoiler alert: There are two Himanshu Suris, one maybe more blazed than the other, kind of dancing in front of a montage of NYC and South Asia scenery and news clips about drones. Obama is in there somewhere; so are some drone pilots who are quiet suburbanites by day, but stealthy killers by night. There is probably an important metaphor in this song about the word “drone” replacing “girl/lady.” Keep in mind that the whole video was filmed in front of a green screen, which makes Heems’s dancing goofier than it already is. Here is a bonus track.

MUSIC
A Day in the Life of Das Racist

Director Morgan Spurlock’s (best known for Super Size Me) “A Day in the Life” Hulu series followed Das Racist (Victor Vazquez ’06, Himanshu Suri ’07) around for a day. Thanks, Hulu “A Day in the Life” series! Stuyvesant High School shout out at 3:22, Wesleyan shout out at 4:09 and 4:32. Highlight: meeting with composer Philip Glass for a Free Tibet concert at Carnegie Hall (10:48). This is a good watch if you have 25 minutes to spare.

FEATURED
Heems ’07 Drops Dank Mixtape, Spreads Awareness of Queens Political Districting

What do a Queens gourmet fire-flame chef, a comedy writer-turned-Community star, a 30-year-old Detroit MC with a penchant for Adderall, a Mishka-wearing, wing-eating Crown Heights wild boy, and Victor Vazquez ’06 have in common? They’re all booked for Zonker Harris D—

Well, no. That’s just a smattering of the guests you’ll find on Nerhu Jackets, the brand new Mike Finito-produced mixtape by Heems, aka Himanshu Suri ’07, of Bard Art College-based rap outfit Das Racist. (He’s the one with slightly less hair, sort of.) (Edit: just kidding, Victor shaved his head.) As Pitchfork reports, Heems recently released the tape in partnership with SEVA NY, a Queens community organization, in an effort to publicize the remapping of local political districts in the borough.  Whoah. There’s also music involved.

Fans of Danny Brown’s delirious, cartoon-voice flow could do worse than stream “You Have To Ride The Wave,” which also features Wesleyan-bound Brooklyn weirdo Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire and the ingenious rhyme “Up late at night on Twitter/ I talk to Salmon Rushdie/ Like, it’s just me and him/ I got dirt on you doggie like She & Him.” My faves, though, are “Womyn” and “Womyn 2,” Heems’ bizarrely catchy (or possibly just bizarre) two-part feminist anthem, boasting highlights like “Womyn, I respect you/ Womyn, I wish more people respected you/ Men are scum/ Usually men are dumb”and “Yo, I know, like, seven womyn/ They like to go swimming/ They like to drink tea/ They like to think in the cool breeze from the east on the beach.” Eventually Childish Gambino shows up, because, like, why not?

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Himanshu Suri tumbls, writes about Occupy Wall Street

Tumbling – all the cool kids are doing it, of course, and so does Das Racist’s Himanshu Suri ’07, over at nehrujackets. Homeboy’s pretty prolific, posting not only about his music and sharing snippets of South Asian culture (reprezent, yeahhhh) but also offering up snarky responses to anonymous askbox questions and occasionally opening up the family vaults to share baby pikchas of adorbzness.

Swag

In a recent post, though, @heems gets a little more serious and talks about Occupy Wall Street, supposedly responding to numerous questions on the subject in his askbox. His post includes the following about his time at Wes:

In 2007 I graduated from Wesleyan University where I paid entirely too much money to be taken from Queens, New York to isolated Middletown, Connecticut to be surrounded by white people and other people of color who hoped to learn their extremely profitable codified language.

Suri goes on to describe his time working on “the periphery of Wall Street”, sheds some light from the perspective of a kid of immigrant parents and concludes that the current problems extend beyond Wall Street itself: “The sentiment is the same but the semantics aren’t – occupy wall street is confusing”. Click through here for the original post; it’s definitely worth a read.

EVENT
Das Racist, Leif, Harrison Schaaf, Yea Mann at Eclectic

Come to Eclectic on Friday, February 12th to rage, party, dance, and listen to witty raps about fast food chains.

The lineup consists of Wesleyan DJs Ian Johnson and Harrison Schaff, live performer and seriously durrrty rapper Khalif Diouf (aka Leif), as well as Das Racist.

Based out of Brooklyn, Das Racist is composed of Wesleyan alumni Himanshu Suri and Victor Vazquez. They first gained mainstream attention with the song “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.” Since then, Das Racist has been featured in Pitchfork Media, XLR8R magazine, The Village Voice, The Guardian, and The New Yorker, just to name a few. On January 19th, they headlined Highline Ballroom in New York City. It’s also rumored that Fox News will be doing a write-up about the show on Friday night.

WHEN: Friday, February 12.
Set times: Yea Mann:
9:00-11:00
Harrison Schaaf:
11:00 – 12:15
LE1F:
12:15 – 1:00
Das Racist:
1:00 – 3:00
COST: $7, Tickets on sale at Usdan

MUSIC
Das Racist video: “Rainbow in the Dark”

das-racistIf Pizza Hut/Taco Bell earworming into your brain last year turned you off from Das Racist completely, maybe time to reevaluate.

A newish video is out for “Rainbow in the Dark”, a track that uses fast food (via White Castle) only as a jump-off point and is more indicative of what they’re about. Some rap exegesis might be in order to figure out what it means, but at the very least it transcends the inanity of that previous offering.

Be awed by the viscous lyrical delivery and hyperliterate rhymes, as self-aware but un-self-conscious as ever. With references to NMH’s Jeff Mangum, fancy cheeses, T-Pain, Stephen Hawking, Don King, Gary Soto, themselves, the Harold and Kumar sequel, and various Internet communications technologies delivered in a cannabinoid stream over the course of four minutes.

Bonus points for “Wikipedia Brown,” and this line:

“peep us at the Grammys, we’d like to thank G-Chat”

Mostly SFW, although be wary of Victor’s pubes if that’s a problem. Directed by Jordan Fish ’06: